Page 270 of The Lies We Play

I watch him because I don't know where else to put my eyes. He is barefoot on his own floor, but nothing about him feels casual. He moves like a man who has taken hits for a living and learned not to waste energy on anything that doesn't matter. Shoulders broad beneath the worn T-shirt. Back strong. Neck tense. The faded denim sits low on his hips, and I hate that I notice. I hate that my body knows how to notice him before my mind can decide whether noticing is allowed.

He takes a glass from the cabinet.

One glass.

I wonder if he almost reached for two.

The thought is small and brutal.

When he hands it to me, his fingers don't touch mine. He makes sure of it. That restraint is its own contact.

“Sit,” he says, then corrects himself so fast I almost miss it. “Please. Take a seat wherever you want.”

There. A microfracture.

I take the leather sofa because it is nearest and because my legs have begun to feel less reliable than I would prefer. The cushion slightly gives under me. It’s soft. Too soft. I sit on the edge anyway, back straight. I take the glass Creed hands me, holding it with both hands like evidence.

Creed takes the chair adjacent to the sofa.

He sits forward, forearms on his thighs.

“I can’t believe you’re here,” he says.

His eyes stay on me. He looks at me as if I’m an apparition, a miracle, a wound that learned how to walk back into the room.

I want to tell him I don’t understand anything.

I want to tell him I can’t believe I am finally away from my family and not immediately calculating the cost. That sitting here feels dangerous because some part of me feels secure, and secure is a word my body distrusts on principle. My first therapist used to call it paranoia when I brought up how my family made me feel. Not in a cruel way. She had kind eyes. She had degrees on the wall. She had no idea that kind eyes could still be wrong.

So I stopped telling her.

It was easier to let everyone believe I was fine.

It was easier to be controlled than to keep explaining why control felt like a hand over my mouth.

Creed sets his hands on his knees, palms down, like a man instructing his own body not to reach. His hands are big. Not elegant in a soft way. Athlete’s hands. Working hands. The knuckles look as if they have met boards, gloves, sticks, and other men’s bones. There is a small white scar along the second knuckle of his right hand that I want, with a suddenness that embarrasses me, to put my mouth on.

I look away from his hands.

I look at his face instead.

Fuck that’s worse.

“I don’t know where to begin,” I say.

“You don’t have to begin.”

“That’s not—” I stop and set the glass on the low table because my grip has become too firm. “I have an hour. I have to begin somewhere.”

“Not tonight.”

He says it quietly, as if he has learned that carefulness can sound like handling.

“Begin isn’t what we’re doing tonight,” he says. “We’re just in a room. For me, that’s enough—everything.”

His mouth moves like he almost adds more—he doesn’t.

Then his hand lifts from his knee by an inch.